This invention provides archers with the ability to aim more accurately by adjusting the supported aiming point while at full draw. In any shooting sport, accuracy is the principal objective of the shot. Whether shooting a rifle, pistol or any type of traditional archery equipment, a supported shot is always more accurate than one made freehand or otherwise unsupported. When sighting a rifle, the shooter will typically set up some type of rest or shooting bench to prevent movement of the firearm. When hunting, the hunter will attempt to find some type of natural rest such as a tree limb, stump or rock or utilize a commercial support device to support the firearm prior to making a kill shot.
For years manufacturers have produced commercial firearm shooting support products to address the need for accuracy when target shooting or hunting. There are some very rudimentary devices for traditional archery, but none gives the archer the ability to adjust the aiming point while at full draw. Advantageously, embodiments of an Adjustable Archery Support System addresses this very important need by giving the archer the ability to make sight alignment adjustments for a supported shot while at full draw.
The most common archery aiming sight setup consists of one to six aiming pins, aligned either vertically or horizontally, and mounted in the sight window of the bow, just above the handgrip, and a second aiming point mounted on the bow string at the point where the string comes closest to the archers aiming eye while at full draw. The string mounted device, commonly called a peep sight, is usually a round or oval shaped disc with a hole in its center that is mounted on the string by evenly separating the strands of the string, inserting the disc and tying it off at the top and bottom, as depicted in FIG. 5. When the two sights are properly adjusted, the archer should be able to line up the selected front pin with the target while looking through the string-mounted peep sight at full draw. This front to rear alignment is the same concept used with firearms with one sight mounted at the muzzle on the barrel and one sight mounted at the breech end of the barrel in front of the shooters aiming eye. When both sights are aligned with the target, accuracy is greatly improved.
Alignment is relatively simple with a firearm when using a shooting support or shooting stick. Aiming adjustments are easy with a firearm because once the firearm is supported at the forearm or muzzle end, only one hand is needed to hold the weapon secure at the butt end thereby leaving the other hand free to adjust the shooting rest up, down, right or left, as needed, to align with the target. Even after cocking the weapon, the characteristics of the front and rear sights do not change. In other words, there is no difference in aiming a firearm that is cocked and ready to shoot versus one that is not.
This is not true for traditional archery. The front and rear sights on a bow are not aligned when the bow is not at full draw. Target and sight alignment cannot be achieved until the bow is at full draw. In order to cock or pull the bow, both of the archer's hands are required throughout release of the arrow toward the target. Holding a firearm in the cocked position is performed by a mechanical, spring-loaded device inside the weapon. With a bow, the archer's hands and arms perform this function. Since both hands are required to hold the bow at full draw, which is the only position where sight alignment can occur, as shown by the arrow in FIG. 6, it is impossible to make full draw sight adjustments from a supported shooting position because one hand would have to be removed from either the bow handle or the string to make an adjustment to the support. This would cause full draw to be lost or would uncock the bow and make the shot impossible, as shown by the arrow in FIG. 7. This is where embodiments of an Adjustable Archery Support System are unique, because with prior shooting support configurations, supported full draw sighting adjustments are not possible.
With an Adjustable Archery Support System, the archer can easily make fluid and smooth sighting adjustments while at full draw, never removing either hand from the bow or the string. This gives the archer a virtually unlimited and supported vertical and horizontal range of movement for sight adjustment with the ability to make supported shots that are exponentially more accurate.